


she ain't fancy she ain't fine

by cosmogyral



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Picaresque
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:11:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyral/pseuds/cosmogyral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a part of the reminiscences of Spinneret Mindfang, here published for the edification of the wicked and the entertainment of the virtuous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she ain't fancy she ain't fine

**Author's Note:**

> HSO BR1 fic, for adaorardor's prompt [Picaresque + police procedural, Vriska<3Terezi](http://hs-olympics.dreamwidth.org/13513.html?thread=1601993#cmt1601993).

It is now for me to relate how my cousin and sometime partner Serket came into service as the engraver to Captain Pyrope of the Royal Guard, though it is a story that is professionally painful for me to relate. I was, of course, absent for this episode, informed of it only in retrospect through Serket's extravagant boasts, but through careful investigation I believe I have worked out what remains of the truth. It is as follows.

I was, as I have said, in the cells of the capital, and sorely in need of funds for bail. I had dispatched Serket to fetch the counterfeit funds we kept in reserve in an arroyo not far from the capital, but what with one thing and another, Serket had done a very poor job of it; to wit, she had been seen. She protested gravely at this to me, saying that she had been very well disguised in my clothes, and besides that the witness was an old woman and very nearsighted, and besides that they had been miles away at the time, and besides that Serket doubted she had been seen at all!!!!!!!! It was all nonsense and I told her so in no uncertain terms. I am really extremely lucky that she did not take this opportunity to reassess her loyalties to the imprisoned marquise of a pirate fleet. Instead, after considerable grumbling, she went to steal the eyewitness' report.

She was just in time. A young troll with hardly eight sweeps' growth of horns was toting boxes of forms and the composite portrait to the Captain's office, and she offered assistance, which was gratefully accepted. They took the reports through every layer of security and laid the portrait on the Captain's unoccupied desk, at which point the young troll, encouraged by a boondollar, up and left. Serket must have been practically pailing herself in delight. She lifted the picture, ready to take it out the same way it came in. It was at that precise moment that Captain Pyrope reentered.

"Thank you, young miss," the Captain said, taking a seat at the desk with some care. "You may leave the portrait on the desk."

Serket stared at her in open awe. They had been friends as girls, practically still hatchlings, playing at ancestors and death, and Serket had blinded her some years back. She had assumed that the Captain could not have risen so high without culling without some form of sight, but the woman in front of her was indeed blind, and walked with a cane, and did not recognize Serket at all. It was a shock to the system, and it left Serket strangely, and, I am afraid, very foolishly off-guard.

In the meantime, the Captain had groped her way to the portrait. She lifted it with a profound grimace and dragged her tongue straight down the front of it.

"I can't see this," she said, her grimace getting worse. "This is far too small. Call the engraver to enhance it."

I am sure to Serket it seemed like a brilliant opportunity. "Oh, I'll do it, Captain," she said, lifting the portrait. "I'm an engraver of sorts."

Captain Pyrope waved a hand--I suppose it could not matter to her very much how well the work was done so long as it was done large and bright enough to taste--and Serket scurried out, the thing pinioned under her arm.

She blew the thing up, of course. She certainly had ink enough, from three sweeps' counterfeiting practice. She also altered herself beyond all recognition in it, making the thief look to be an oliveblood of ten sweeps with horns that were practically antlers. Some vanity, there. She took her time with the background, as well, adding the curves of the arroyo and the pink moon in the sky. It was all very artful, and I must say I enjoy it a great deal. I have it on my cabin wall at present, along with some of her more youthful portraits of me. I do not know what Captain Pyrope could possibly have made of it, except that when she drew her tongue over it, she made the very same face as last time.

"Enhance it again," she said. "No, not the _troll._ The arroyo and the moon. We can navigate by it."

Serket was at a loss with this request, but did as she was told. She had to use practically all the pink in her kit to get the moon properly, and privately she was pleased to think of Captain Pyrope lost and wandering in the hills with an enhanced map of nowhere at all.

This portrait was met with a much longer taste-test, when Serket presented it. Then Pyrope lifted her head with a grin. "Oh, yes," she said. "This is what I wanted. The ink is _very_ familiar. This is the same pink as was on every single one of those counterfeit boondollars down the arroyo, Miss Vriska Serket."

Serket, to her credit, possibly, stood her ground. "It cannot be," she said. "I am no daring, dashing, super attractive smuggler and counterfeiter and pirate. I am only an extremely boring private in the guard."

"I think, Miss Serket," suggested Captain Pyrope, "that that is as fake as this incredibly fake portrait you have just handed me."

"Well, taste-test me then," said Serket, quite out of patience, and she must have been very surprised when Captain Pyrope did.

They taste-tested each other for some time, and very thoroughly. After some hours had gone by, and Serket had regained her pants but not her tunic and certainly not her original socks, Captain Pyrope sat back on the desk. Serket eyed her warily.

"I think you are not a dashing, daring, super attractive smuggler or whatever that was at all. You are free to go, since you are indeed a lowly worm of a private of the guard," Captain Pyrope said.

"Hey, now--" Serket began.

"The ultimately pitiful position," Captain Pyrope said serenely.

"Oh," said Serket, much pleased. "Yeah, okay."


End file.
